Free Wi-Fi

So now the President of the United States, as part of his "Year of Action," tells Americans this: "In a country where we expect free wi-fi with our coffee, shouldn't we have it in our schools?"

I was going to write that he said this with a straight face, but the photo shows him with a pleasant smile.

Does anyone besides the President think the wi-fi in a coffee shop is free? The customers don't pay for it directly, but they also don't pay for the sign on the door, the napkins, or the chairs and tables--at least, not directly. THESE ARE ALL PART OF THE COST OF THE COFFEE!

For those who still believe this President, here's another way to explain it. The owner of the coffee shop pays a bill for the "free" wi-fi, just like he/she pays a bill for electricity, water, sewer, rent, and myriad taxes. He/she pays interest on the loan which was used to pay for the furnishings, the marketing, maybe the franchise fee, etc. None of this is "free" except in the mind of someone who is illiterate when it comes to economics and business. The owner pays for all these things with the proceeds from selling you the coffee. The "free" wi-fi is an inducement for you to come in and buy the coffee, but you're paying for it.

This lunacy is what we get when we elect someone who has never run a business or taken an economics class or even thought about who pays for anything.

No wonder he thinks he can mandate free health care! Or free raises for all Americans! Or free student loans! Or, for that matter, free multi-trillion dollar deficits!

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
WI-FI IS FREE

One climate report but 30 different headlines

Kudos to Jaime Fuller at the Washington Post for collecting these variations of the coverage of President Obama's climate assessment. The assessment itself is mostly unscientific fear-mongering, although I do like the section on mitigation efforts. Others have pointed out the anti-scientific nature of the assessment. But I like what Fuller did here because she shows how the media spins whatever the President says, mostly without any modicum of critical thinking or analysis.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/05/06/1-climate-report-and-30-different-headlines-written-on-it/

The report has been covered extensively by newspapers, magazines, blogs and television shows since its release. Many of the stories about the report -- as is always the case with politically charged issues and Obama administration documents -- were filled with opinionated inflections and internal debates about what the policy prescriptions and data would lead to down the road. The wide-ranging reactions to the report reveal a lot about the politics of the issue, but you don't need to read the articles to understand it all. A quick glance at the headlines reveals dozens of pointed fingers, disbelief, fear, skepticism and many, many, many ways to frame this single report. Many news consumers are only going to see one of these headlines, and are only going to understand one facet of this giant debate.

Try to match the headline with its source -- it's not as hard as you might think, and goes a long way toward explaining how much influence your media diet has on your politics -- and vice versa.  Click the link to find out where it's from.

There are the relatively straightforward headlines.

 

There are the terror-inducing headlines.

There are the terror-inducing clickbait headlines.

 

The Wall Street Journal headline unsurprisingly focuses on the potential financial fallout.

There are the "all politics is local" takes.

There are headlines that tackle one narrow section of the climate report.

There are the headlines for international audiences shaking their heads at us.

And there are the headline obviously written by people in D.C.

 

Most importantly for the future of the climate report and how it will be implemented, there are the headlines that manage to stuff a lot of politics into a few carefully chosen and bolded words -- something that can be said of many of the above headlines too. These headlines are perhaps the easiest to trace back to their source.

National Climate Assessment disinformation

The U.S. National Climate Assessment Report was published Tuesday, May 6, 2014. Not even George Orwell could have imagined a more extreme case of NEWSPEAK. Sadly, it's not a joke. The President of the United States is imposing regulations and policies on American citizens based on outright falsehoods that are easily refuted by those who study the climate with historical records.

That said, there are some useful, productive sections on mitigation. Here's the best short analysis I've seen so far: http://judithcurry.com/2014/05/06/u-s-national-climate-assessment-report/

This section is outrageously false, but much of the media is covering it verbatim.

This section has a faux factual basis, meaning some of the statistics are accurate but taken out of context to frighten and alarm ignorant citizens.

Rather than rehash the science, I'm just providing some excerpts from other critics:

Chairman Smith: “The White House today released a report claiming that changes in regional U.S. weather can be attributed to manmade climate change. The climate is changing due to a number of factors, including human contributions and natural cycles. But the administration’s report includes unscientific characterizations on the connection between severe weather events and climate change and fails to explain the absence of warming over the last 15 years.

“This is a political document intended to frighten Americans into believing that any abnormal weather we experience is the direct result of human CO2 emissions. In reality, there is little science to support any connection between climate change and more frequent or extreme storms. It’s disappointing that the Obama administration feels compelled to stretch the truth in order to drum up support for more costly and unnecessary regulations and subsidies.”

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) was critical of the draft National Climate Assessment, saying that “An overly narrow focus can encourage one-sided solutions, for instance by giving an impression that reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone will solve all of the major environmental concerns discussed in this report.” The NAS has also criticized “the lack of explicit discussion about the uncertainties associated with the regional model projections,” saying that “Decision makers need a clear understanding of these uncertainties in order to fairly evaluate the actual utility of using these projections as a basis for planning decisions.”

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there is “high agreement” among leading experts that long-term trends in weather disasters are not attributable to human-caused climate change. Hurricanes have not increased in the U.S. in frequency, intensity or normalized damage since at least 1900. The U.S. currently has gone over seven years without a Category 3 or stronger hurricane making landfall. Government data also indicate no association between climate change and tornado activity. The data on droughts paint a similar picture. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that “Climate change was not a significant part” of the recent drought in Texas. And the IPCC found that “in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, central North America ….” The IPCC also states there is “low confidence” in any climate-related trends for flood magnitude or frequency on a global scale.

http://junkscience.com/2014/05/06/lamar-smith-of-texas-touche/

Tuesday, May 06, 2014

Fact Checking the White House’s Bogus Climate Assessment

Heritage

When he was President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel made this disturbingly honest quote, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.” The hysteria surrounding the latest administration report on global warming implies a variation on that dictum, “Never miss an opportunity to create a serious crisis.” Though many of the crises created or compounded by the administration are real enough, the release of the National Climate Assessment has been hyped (abetted by much of the media) with bogus claims of past, current and predicted climate impacts.

NCA Quote: “Precipitation patterns are changing”
Reality: Precipitation patterns were never constant. Creating a crisis from the normal allows climate catastrophists to point to every abnormal bit of wet or dry as being “consistent with models” that predict one horrible outcome or another.

NCA Quote: “sea level is rising”
Reality: Yes sea level is rising, which it has done since the end of the last ice age. But the frequent claims and predictions of accelerating sea-level rise are not borne out in the data. In fact sea-level rise has slowed recently. One main-stream climatologist says this variation “makes the 21st century of sea level rise projections seem like unjustified arm waving.”

NCA Quote: “the frequency and intensity of some extreme weather events are increasing”
Reality: The latest report on the science from The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and analysis provided by the administration’s own National Climatic Data Center conclude that there isn’t a case for extreme weather increases - no significant trends for floods, droughts, hurricanes or tornadoes.

NCA Quote: “In Arctic Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded”
Reality: Global warming is supposedly global. Global sea ice (Arctic and Antarctic) is above average and, for this time of year, it is at its highest level in 30 years, which is the third-highest on record.

The authors apparently do not think anybody is checking their statements or they couldn’t possibly think they would get away with this one:

NCA Quote: “It is notable that as these data records have grown longer and climate models have become more comprehensive, earlier predictions have largely been confirmed.”
Reality: The past 15 years have seen the climate model predictions stray farther and farther from actual temperatures (here and here). Last year, prominent climatologist, Hans von Storch, said, “If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models.” Maybe Professor von Storch needs four more years to be sure the models are wrong, but there are no grounds on which the models can be declared “confirmed.” Instead, the predictions are getting worse and worse.

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog